


A bridge to the future

by babyRage_lyla



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Background Slash, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26201518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babyRage_lyla/pseuds/babyRage_lyla
Summary: Maeglin takes it upon himself to straighten things out.
Relationships: Eöl/Fëanor | Curufinwë
Comments: 6
Kudos: 37





	A bridge to the future

The maia came, as it did every morning, to check on them, as ever empty-handed.

Fëanor handed it one of his many messages for his sons. 

They had been long letters at first, filled with details about his new life, requests. _I'd like to meet you, if it is fine with you. I'd like to talk to you._

Now it was usually just one sentence. _I love you_ was the most frequent, from what Eöl had been able to see. _I hope you're happy_ was next. 

He had never received a reply. 

The maia left with the message after delivering its routine reprimands and warnings – Eöl had paid no heed to them in the beginning, and could not have given less of a fuck about them now even if he had tried his utmost to.

Maeglin caught Fëanor's gaze when Fëanor turned from the open doorway after the maia disappeared. 

Maeglin held that gaze, with all the hurt and confusion that blazed from it.

Fëanor looked away first. 

“They will reply when they're ready to,” he said. “And if they don't, I just want them to know that I will never stop loving them.”

Maeglin furrowed his brow. His eyes lost focus, his thought processes gliding into motion while he laid the table with their breakfast.

Eöl noticed, but said nothing. He plopped down on a chair, still largely undressed, and rubbed the large hickey Fëanor had left on his shoulder the night before. They fucked, which was no secret to anyone anymore. It was nothing romantic either, but they cared. 

“Can you even trust that dull asswipe of a maia to deliver those messages?” he said.

Fëanor shrugged. It was not a fluid movement. “There's no reason why it wouldn't deliver them.”

“The fact that you're living with us, for one?”

“So why would it even take the messages?”

“No idea, but there must be something fishy going on. There's always something fishy going on in this place, starting from the fact that we can't leave it.”

“Yeah well, that's a whole different matter.”

“The valar did try to prevent me from talking to you,” Maeglin put in, quietly. Maeglin was still quiet but there was a steady assurance in his voice and in his manner, a far cry from the elf he had been in Gondolin. “They kept saying that I should live with my mother's kin.”

“Yeah, that would have been such a great life.” Eöl grabbed his favourite knife and stabbed the table with it.

That knife always ended up stuck in the table when they talked about the valar or Aredhel's side of the family. 

Fëanor looked at the knife and the many dents it had left on the table. 

Maeglin shifted his gaze on him and cast him a questioning, almost challenging look, when Fëanor noticed. Then he searched his father's eyes. 

Eöl understood in a heartbeat. 

“Have you seen my message?”

Eöl had been expecting the question. His reply was smooth. “Maeglin took it.”

Fëanor frowned. 

Fëanor frown was – if Eöl had to be 100% honest – one of the most beautiful things about the cursed place that was Valinor, but it was also more often than not a harbinger of trouble.

“Where is Maeglin?” Fëanor asked next. 

Maeglin usually met his (wandering) mother once or twice a month, and he had already met her this month, and there was no reason why he would have to take Fëanor's message to his sons with him. 

Eöl grumbled. This was probably the most delicate part of Maeglin's plan, and of course he had to be the one to do all the explaining and deal with Fëanor's reaction. 

“He went on a journey. He decided to find your sons and talk to them for you.”

Fëanor froze for an instant then his dismay burst forth. “It will take him months just to reach Tirion!” 

“Perhaps he won't have to go that far.”

Fëanor stomped over to chest where Maeglin kept his things, opened it, perhaps in hopes of finding out that Eöl was lying. The chest was half-empty. Fëanor rubbed his forehead with his hand. “Even if he doesn't have to go all the way to Tirion,” he reasoned, “it'll still be a long journey, and he's alone, and he barely knows Valinor.”

“Maeglin can look after himself,” Eöl said with confidence.

“Why did you let him go?”

“Because he really wanted to.”

Fëanor planted himself in front of Eöl. “How are you so calm?”

“Because I trust my son,” Eöl said, but that did not quite convey it. He could not put into words how happy he was that he had been able to patch things up with his son, even if it meant dealing with the valar and with the Ñoldor who had hurt Maeglin more than he would ever have liked to. 

It was not enough for Fëanor. “Do you even _understand_ how dangerous this whole affair is?”

“Maeglin knows that I love him, and that you love him, and that's all he needs. It was the same for your sons, wasn't it?” Eöl replied, a touch exasperated. 

Of course, that was the wrongest possible thing to say.

Fëanor's whole face tensed up. He slowly walked over to the corner where his spinning wheel was, sat down and began preparing the wool with curt, harsh gestures. 

Eöl cursed under his breath. 

Fëanor was easy to hurt, but he had learnt to wield his hurt as a weapon or a shield, at need. Sometimes his hurt was a cuirass, and it scared Eöl a little, partly because Maeglin wore the same cuirass, every once in a while. 

The spinning wheel started, with its dull droning sound that threatened to wear on Eöl's nerves just then. More importantly, he absolutely didn't want to let Fëanor clam up then spend days talking to a wall. 

“Hey, I didn't mean–”

“I know what you meant. It's fine, really.”

“Yeah, you're fine and I'm next in line to Manwë's throne.”

Fëanor tried to ignore him. Eöl stood there and stared at him.

“I'm just afraid, okay?” Fëanor snapped. “Afraid that something will happen to him. I don't want anything to happen to Maeglin because of me.”

“I won't hold it against you.”

“That's _not_ what I care about.”

“If something unpleasant does happen to my son, I will burn Valinor to the ground and you,” Eöl said, jamming a finger in front of Fëanor's face, “will help me do it.”

Fëanor stopped treadling and looked him in the eye. “Like I did in Alqualondë or like you did in Gondolin?”

It was Eöl's turn to tense up.

“Sorry,” Fëanor said after a moment. “You just didn't want to lose your son.”

“Fucking great job I did of that.” Eöl put a hand on Fëanor's shoulder and shook him. “Remember that we are not as unprepared as we used to be. We have new weapons now, weapons which don't even look like weapons. Drop one on Tirion, and your precious half-relatives–”

“Your beloved in-laws– ”

Eöl grimaced. “Will be gone in the blink of an eye. They will never know what hit them.”

“Would probably think Morgoth or something like that.”

They were – a little awkwardly – trying to resume their usual routine when the maia chose to appear.

“Where is Lómion, son of Írissë, daughter of Ñolofinwë?”

Eöl's hand went to his knife, but the table was not the target he had in mind. 

Fëanor took it upon himself to reply. “He left, I sent him on an errand.”

“Where?”

“I asked him to search for something for me, in Tirion, or whatever else he may find it.”

“Why did you not tell me when I last came?”

“Because we decided it after you last visited.”

The maia seemed to accept the explanation, but took twice as long to deliver its admonishments, and spent a good deal of that time droning on an on about Eöl's failures as a father, speaking as if Eöl had no right to live with his son and was just borrowing him from his mother and her family. 

At least, the maia concluded, Fëanor had come to terms with the fact that he was not a good father.

Eöl just barely _barely_ restrained himself, and just because he knew that lashing out would mean losing Maeglin, very likely for good. 

As soon as the maia left, Eöl spat after it and went on to break anything in the common room that could be broken, apart from the spinning wheel and Maeglin's chest. When there was nothing left to destroy, he slumped against the wall, breathing heavily, his head dangling between his knees. 

His (old Sindarin) cursing made for pleasant background music – vicarious venting – while Fëanor picked up the debris and sorted it: any piece of wood next to the hearth, anything that could be melted in a pile next to the door, anything useless outside of the door. Finally, he swept anything that was too small off the floor. 

Eöl joined him just as he was finishing.

“If I had been born in Valinor, I think I too would have wanted to leave it even at the cost of kinslaying,” he blurted. He had not been meaning to ever say that out loud, even though he had been thinking it for a long while. He blamed the valar for that too.

“That's not something to be proud of.”

“And I'm not. As you're not. But damn damn damn, you try to cope with things and they always feel the need to provoke you all over again.” 

“Don't tell me the heir to Manwë's throne doesn't believe that the valar and maiar always get everything right?”

Eöl was not in the mood for jokes anymore. He debated whether to punch Fëanor. He took too long, and Fëanor was leaning over and was kissing him. They very rarely kissed. Perhaps that was why Eöl found the kiss endearing after the maia's visit rather than mawkish.

“Come on, time to build again.”

Aredhel told Maeglin that the sons of Fëanor were in Valmar. Their mother had her own workshop there, not far from the Halls of Aulë where her family lived, and they were under her supervision.

Maeglin was a stain on the pristine white of the buildings in Valmar and of the souls of the people who inhabited them. He was dark: of hair, of eyes, of skin. The people he came across looked for dark thoughts behind his black eyes and under his black hair that his father had braided tightly enough to withstand weeks of travel. 

Everybody knew the truly decent elves had blond hair, or were at least fair-skinned. 

The Sons of Fëanor were different shades of bronze, too dark for any good. 

Surprisingly, no maia stayed with them in the room with the round table and coloured glass in every window, and no black. 

Maeglin had grown scared as he approached his destination, but at the end of his own personal quest he didn't falter. 

“Why did you want to meet us?” Celegorm asked, friendly enough. 

Maeglin remembered him, with his hair that was murky silver, like the keen edge of one of his father's black swords. 

Maeglin remembered Celegorm's grandmother too – his relief upon meeting her after the maiar dragged him to where she dwelt to tell her his story so that she could turn it into a tapestry. Míriel took longer to weave her tapestry than would have been necessary, and staying with her had done much to help him deal with everything. Míriel took so long that Námo himself started reproaching her. Every time he did, she undid a chunk of her work. 

The memory emboldened Maeglin even more. He cut straight to the chase. “Don't you want to meet your father again?”

The brothers – all three of them – made surprised noises and exchanged puzzled glances. 

Maedhros, the dark flame, replied. “We very much would like to.”

“Then why haven't you replied to any of his messages?”

“Messages?” Curufin echoed. 

“I had no idea they allowed him to send messages,” Maedhros said.

If it was a lie, it was slickly delivered.

Maeglin lifted an unimpressed eyebrow. “He has been sending you messages every other day for over a year now.”

“How do you know?” This time, Maedhros's voice was a tad harsher.

“I see him send them.”

Once again the brothers looked at each other in surprise. 

“I'm not sure what your goal might be,” Celegorm said, “but this isn't funny.”

Maeglin didn't bat an eye. “Your father just wants an answer from you, and I think you ought to send it. I will bring it to him, if need be.”

Celegorm stood, planting both fists on the table. 

Curufin held him back with a decisive sweep of his hand. “You're saying Father isn't in the Halls of Mandos anymore?”

“Of course not.” Maeglin was himself completely befuddled for an instant, then it clicked. “They didn't tell you?”

“Where is he?” Curufin eagerly asked.

“He's been living with me and Father. We are a family.” Maeglin felt heat rise to his cheeks, but he didn't regret saying that. 

“But where?”

“I don't believe this,” Maeglin scoffed. “Father was entirely right. I knew something must be off, but I didn't imagine they wouldn't even tell you that your father is back.” 

He unwound in his mind the strings of insults and blasphemies Eöl hurled at the valar. He supposed it wouldn't do if he planted a dagger on the polished, perfectly smooth Valmarian table, but now he realised the full venting power of his father's table stabbing. He tried to relax his shoulders. His hand slid away from the sheath of his dagger to the strap of the bag that hung from his belt next to it. He recalled the tiny strip of parchment rolled up in a tight cylinder he had stolen from Fëanor's workbench. He had decided not to hand it over immediately, in case the sons didn't actually want to meet their father. 

Maeglin had watched Fëanor pen the message. 

It was an _I will always love you_ this time. 

He fished it from the bag held it out. 

Curufin grasped it and quickly unrolled it and held it with both hands like the very existence of the world depended on it. Maedhros leant over to read. Celegorm scrambled to stand behind them.

Maedhros looked away first. His eyes were veiled with tears, but Maeglin caught the storm brewing inside them. Maedhros brimmed with the uprush of his dark fire, fierce and fell like one of Morgoth's evil maiar. 

He stood.

“Go tell Moryo and Pityo and Telvo, immediately,” he ordered in a soldier's tone. “And get packed.”

“Where are you going?” Celegorm asked, sniffling.

“To get the other messages.”

Nerdanel handed Maedhros all the messages, as expected. The maia delivered them in the Halls of Aulë, where Mahtan and Nerdanel withheld them from their intended recipients. 

“We just thought it wasn't time for you to read them yet.”

It was a large bag, packed with them.

“You didn't even tell us Father was back,” Maedhros hissed, like he himself was a whip, ready to crack. “Did you meet him?”

Nerdanel couldn't look him in the eye. The question went unanswered. “He has led you astray once.”

“We chose to go.”

“Your father still won't listen to the Valar, still won't accept his family, and he's living with a dark elf who's only ever been trouble. What good can it do you to meet him?”

“Good?” Maedhros squeezed the glass with the water he had been given between his fingers. It broke and broke his skin. “Father has paid for his mistakes, and for everybody else's mistakes, too. He doesn't have to agree with the Valar if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to get along with his half-family if he doesn't want to, he's free to spend the rest of his life with whomever he wishes, since you turned your back on him even before we decided to leave.”

“It was mutual,” Nerdanel said, staring at the blood which started to ooze on her table.

“Then you surely see the limits of the Valar's statute on marriage now, wise Mother.” Maedhros started plucking the bits of glass that had become stuck in his skin, lining them next to one another. When he was done, he stood. “We're leaving tomorrow afternoon, at the latest.”

“Maitimo,” Nerdanel put her hand on his arm. 

He let her, but said, “don't try to stop us.”

“I just ask you to reconsider.”

“I'd rather be back in Angband than not meet Father.” He paused to make sure his mother understood. He grasped the bag with his good hand, lifted it. “Don't try to stop us. Anyone who tries to stop us is an enemy and I'll make sure their death is one they never forget.”

Nerdanel learnt on that day that the elf who had survived Thangorodrim and jumped in a pit of lava was not an elf to be pitied. 

Luckily, Maeglin's message arrived well ahead of Maeglin himself and the sons, carried by a jay that was not a usual inhabitant of that sunless forest in the north-west of Valinor that Eöl had chosen because it felt vaguely like home, though it wasn't and could never be.

Eöl didn't tell Fëanor about Maeglin's message. 

Fëanor would rush out to meet him (them), and he needed rest after all the weeks he'd spent worrying.

To be fair, Eöl too had being growing more and more worried as time went by, so he had hard time concealing how relieved he was. He was also glad that he got a chance to prepare to meet the sons – again. He had only ever met the five youngest, and they had not exactly gotten along during their first life. But before his death he would not have believed that he could get along with Curufinwë Fëanáro, and instead here they were. 

He coaxed said elf away from his obsessive work in the forge and into a long dance, setting a rhythm for him with the tambourine. Then they danced together, keeping the rhythm of the dance with finger cymbals, spinning around each other and taunting each other but never actually touching. Then they fucked until even the moon grew tired. Then Eöl gave Fëanor a potent sleeping draught that Fëanor drank gladly. 

Two mornings later, Eöl signalled for everybody to hush when he perceived Fëanor stir in their bedroom. 

Maeglin took his cue.

He tiptoed to the door and slipped into the room. 

The joy brightening Fëanor's face repaid him for his long journey and for all the questioning he had been subjected to regarding why he was taking the sons away from their mother and their peaceful new life. His only reply was: a family matter. 

He pitied all the pristine white but lightless souls who couldn't tell that he just wanted to make a loved one happy.

Fëanor stood up and pulled him close and hugged him. 

“How are you?” he asked.

“I'm very fine.” Maeglin replied. “You look nice too.”

Fëanor sighed in relief wrapped his arms around him tighter, trying to make up for weeks apart in a single hug.

“Listen, I found them,” Maeglin said, pulling back at last. He didn't offer any more explanations, which Fëanor dared not ask. “But let's go.”

Maeglin took him by the hand and walked to the door. Fëanor strained his ears for any unusual sound, but the house was quiet, almost as if it had been empty. He stopped before the door. Maeglin smiled at him as he opened it. 

Fëanor laid eyes on his living sons for the first time in ages upon ages. 

Maedhros, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amrod and Amras all stood, slowly, as if they feared breaking an illusion.

Fëanor's hand squeezed Maeglin's, but that was his only movement.

“Come on, what are you all waiting for now?” Eöl said somewhere behind Maedhros and Caranthir. He pushed Maedhros, both to break the standstill and out of irritation, because Maedhros whom he had never met before turned out to be the only Fëanorian he actually didn't like.

Maedhros stumbled forward.

Fëanor sprang into motion and caught him.

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly just wanted to write something where Maeglin is the one doing the helping, instead of being helped (but I do hope I'm not the only one who would like to see Fëanor and Eöl (and their sons) burn Valinor to the ground).


End file.
